LISA FITTKO, 95

Doubly on the run as a leftist and a Jew, Lisa Fittko eluded Hitler's grasp not once but many times, repeatedly guiding other refugees on a mountainous escape route from Nazi-dominated Europe.

Settling in Chicago after World War II, she worked as a secretary to support relatives who survived the Holocaust but were shattered by the experience. She wrote her memoirs, which were translated from her native German into French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. She was the subject of a 1998 documentary film, "Lisa Fittko: But We Said We Will Not Surrender." Her exploits inspired fictional characters in several plays and a novel, "Benjamin's Crossing," about the distinguished philosopher Walter Benjamin, the first of the refugees she rescued.

Mrs. Fittko, 95, died Saturday, March 12, of pneumonia in Provident Hospital of Cook County..

Her niece, Evelyn Marsh, recalled that Mrs. Fittko was quietly proud of her role in the anti-Nazi resistance: "She would say, `Maybe people call me a hero, I just thought it was the right thing to do.'"

Mrs. Fittko was raised in Berlin, where she witnessed the bloody street battles that accompanied Hitler's rise to power.

As recounted in her memoir "Solidarity and Treason," she joined the underground resistance and typed anti-Nazi leaflets while playing a phonograph record of "Aida" to mask the clicking sound of the keys. Taking refuge in Prague, she met her husband Hans Fittko, another member of the anti-Nazi resistance.

The two moved on to Switzerland, France and the Netherlands--publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets to be smuggled into Germany. In southern France, they met Varian Fry, an American representing a group of U.S. intellectuals, the Emergency Rescue Committee, aiding political refugees. Fry had heard that, while helping Benjamin escape, Mrs. Fittko had found a route across the Pyrenees to Spain.

Fry asked the Fittkos how much they would take to help others make the crossing. Angrily, they replied that it wasn't a matter of money but conscience.

Over the next nine months, in 1940 and 1941, Hans and Lisa Fittko made numerous trips guiding groups across what was dubbed Route F, for Fry. Then they, too, escaped.

Hans Fittko, who died in 1960, was posthumously awarded Israel's Yad Vashem Medal, an honor reserved for gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In 1986, Mrs. Fittko was awarded Germany's Distinguished Medal of Merit.

Marsh recalled that other family members moved politically to the right. "My father, Lisa's brother, ended up a monarchist," Marsh said, "But Lisa had this dream of a more just society, and it never left her."

In 1960, Mrs. Fittko went back to France, accompanied by her niece Catherine Stodolsky. "It was her first opportunity of looking at her past, after years of struggling to take care of an invalid husband and mother," Stodolsky said.

According to her wishes, Mrs. Fittko's ashes are to be scattered in the south of France. In addition to Stodolsky and Marsh, she is survived by another niece, Marlena Ekstein. A memorial is being planned.